Well, I guess it all started back at the end of World War 1... We was producing all the grain we could, all the farmers, and so we were getting such low prices for everything. Every piece of land in sight, we turned her into land for growin' grain, no matter how mediocre the land was. Just to get our money and make a livin', you know. We used them dry farming techniques and all the machines and technology we had, and I guess they say that tore up a bunch of dirt and left all this fine top soil for the wind to sweep away. But what could we do? We had to grow our crops. I guess we also kinda had a part in this whole mess... us n' the industries were producing so much, and the people of the U. S. just couldn't buy up all our stuff. We were producing more than they were consuming. This depression came and hit us farmers hard. Then when our mortgages were foreclosed and we tried to stop our crops from getting shipped to bloated markets things just went downhill for us farmers.
Courtesy of the NOAA Photo Library
Dust Bowl
So all that soil just sittin' there in the trans-Mississippi Great Plains, then that drought comes alone. This was just a disaster. All that dust starts a-blowing and gusting, and we're there thinkin' that the world is ending or the great Lord is coming for us. We were sitting around with masks, cloths, whatever we could find to keep that dust out of our lungs. So us Okies and the Arkies packed up and left for California with all our possessions, which was just a little. Luckily those fine men in the CCC came by and grew some trees n' stuff to try to restore that barren land.
"Well, it turned my farm into a pile of sand,
Yes, it turned my farm into a pile of sand,
I had to hit that road with a bottle in my hand."
-Woody Guthrie's "Dust Bowl Blues," 1930s.
Then they put into effect that Agricultural Adjustment Administration, where they made the price what it was before this damned depression. This whole operation didn't start to well. We planted cotton and then had to go dig up all it. We had to use some of the pigs for fertilizer, to make our living from crops, even though the whole country was lookin' for food. We did get more income from this price fixing though. They say it made unemployment go up, but I sure didn't care, I was making some decent money and that's what Mr. Roosevelt wanted, right? Then that Supreme Court full of fools had to go and strike it down for some silly reasons. We later got paid to plant crops that conserved soil with some new-fangled act, and then later with another act we would get a nice fixed price for our crops if we restricted our growing and conserved. This stuff was working not too bad.
New Deal
I’m hopin’ that Mr. Roosevelt can help us out with his New Deal, maybe get some money back in our pockets and make our crops worth something. We produced so much stuff so our prices are way down, we just want to be able to get proper payment for all the hard work we do. Faming is a tough job, you best know that! Some of them people are complaining that we’re wasting food by cutting back our production and even wasting some food, but people need to understand that we’re just trying to get by, and I’m glad the government is steppin’ in and setting prices and encouraging us to cut back our production. I hope that this pushes the price of our crops back up to a reasonable level. I also want to go back to my homeland in the Midwest, so I’m hopin’ that those Conservation Corps folks can restore that land and not make it one big dust storm. No matter what happens, that FDR is a good man just for tryin’ to help us common farmer folks.
Farmers of the Great Depression
by David McGee & Nick PierLife Before Depression and Cause
Dust Bowl
So all that soil just sittin' there in the trans-Mississippi Great Plains, then that drought comes alone. This was just a disaster. All that dust starts a-blowing and gusting, and we're there thinkin' that the world is ending or the great Lord is coming for us. We were sitting around with masks, cloths, whatever we could find to keep that dust out of our lungs. So us Okies and the Arkies packed up and left for California with all our possessions, which was just a little. Luckily those fine men in the CCC came by and grew some trees n' stuff to try to restore that barren land.
"Well, it turned my farm into a pile of sand, Yes, it turned my farm into a pile of sand, I had to hit that road with a bottle in my hand." -Woody Guthrie's "Dust Bowl Blues," 1930s.SourceRelief
Then they put into effect that Agricultural Adjustment Administration, where they made the price what it was before this damned depression. This whole operation didn't start to well. We planted cotton and then had to go dig up all it. We had to use some of the pigs for fertilizer, to make our living from crops, even though the whole country was lookin' for food. We did get more income from this price fixing though. They say it made unemployment go up, but I sure didn't care, I was making some decent money and that's what Mr. Roosevelt wanted, right? Then that Supreme Court full of fools had to go and strike it down for some silly reasons. We later got paid to plant crops that conserved soil with some new-fangled act, and then later with another act we would get a nice fixed price for our crops if we restricted our growing and conserved. This stuff was working not too bad.
New Deal
I’m hopin’ that Mr. Roosevelt can help us out with his New Deal, maybe get some money back in our pockets and make our crops worth something. We produced so much stuff so our prices are way down, we just want to be able to get proper payment for all the hard work we do. Faming is a tough job, you best know that! Some of them people are complaining that we’re wasting food by cutting back our production and even wasting some food, but people need to understand that we’re just trying to get by, and I’m glad the government is steppin’ in and setting prices and encouraging us to cut back our production. I hope that this pushes the price of our crops back up to a reasonable level. I also want to go back to my homeland in the Midwest, so I’m hopin’ that those Conservation Corps folks can restore that land and not make it one big dust storm. No matter what happens, that FDR is a good man just for tryin’ to help us common farmer folks.